Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts) Page 3

  “Y-Yeah.” I smile. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”

  The air is so crisp and thin up here, I feel dizzy and frozen on the inside all at once. The only sources of warmth are the occasional cracked-open tower doors as we pass, roaring hearths inside. Tower chimneys puff banners of velvet smoke up into the sky, rivaled in motion only by the multitude of spinning brass crosses on the roofs.

  “Weather vanes,” Malachite says, pointing to one fashioned in the shape of a spinning valkerax. “For wind speed, direction. That sort of thing. Apparently they predict future temperatures, too.”

  “How?” I marvel.

  He shrugs and says simply, “Polymaths. Helkyris is crowded with them.”

  “Hard to pick them out,” I muse. “When I’m so used to them wearing those hideous brown robes.”

  “Didn’t you wear one once?”

  “And I hated every minute of it.” I smirk up at him. It’s true, though—unlike Cavanos, the polymaths in Breych don’t adhere to a strict dress code. Or any dress code at all. I can’t see a single brown thing—just color after woolen color, like flowers crowded together or overexcited butterflies.

  “I think I get it,” I say finally as we cross a far wider bridge, this one carved with wolf heads on either end.

  “Took you that long, hmm?” Malachite drawls.

  “It’s all rock and snow here.” I ignore him. “Gray, white, gray, and more white. What else do you do when you’re living in a monochromatic world, other than dress up to the explosively hued nines?”

  Malachite smirks and I go quiet, watching my boots cross the bridge, the wind whipping my hair around my neck. I put one hand on my chest. It’s so strange—I was so convinced a day ago that, if I walked up that mountain, I’d come back down human. Remembering. Whole. But my chest is still empty. Life hasn’t worked out the way I planned for, schemed for, sacrificed for.

  Betrayed for.

  Lucien’s my witch. My heart is missing still, but it’s never been fuller. I’ve never felt it more than this moment, swelling with something I can’t even name. Pride? Relief? Fear. All of it mixed together in a murky whirlpool, and me holding on to whatever pieces of the shipwreck that float by. Right now, it’s the idea of seeing Lucien again. My feet get quicker, my thoughts slower.

  He’s my witch.

  There’s a contract between us, magical and invisible, and I might still not know all the rules. I know more of them now, to be sure—more than I did three years ago when I first became Heartless. But not all of them. I don’t want to have to know all of them. I’m happy to be alive, that we’re all alive, but a nagging worm gnaws at the base of my skull—I should have my heart back. I’m meant to be human.

  I want to be human.

  With Varia, I wanted to be human.

  What do I want now? With Lucien? With myself? A witch who cares about me is still a witch, and—historically—they haven’t been all that generous with me.

  I try to smile at a little girl passing with her father, her wool covering dyed bright orange and pink. She just stares and stares. But not at me.

  “They’ve never seen a beneather before.” Malachite answers my unasked question.

  “Can’t imagine many beneathers make the journey from the deepest depths to the highest peaks very often,” I tease.

  He smirks back. “I’m the special-est of cases.”

  The cold bites at us, propelling us forward. It’s supposed to be summer, for Old God’s sake! It’s incredible what the people of Helkyris have done with such a small space—barely any ground to walk on, and they’ve built an entire city! Terraces are their ingenious solution, carved into the sides of the three ridges to make more space for people to sit on stone benches, to take in the view of all-green Cavanos from low iron fencing, to linger around market stalls propped up here and there selling hot spice drinks and warm baked treats. It’s a city of levels, of steps, and by the time Malachite leads me to a massive dominating tower of quartz-flecked brick, I’m puffing my lungs out.

  “This is the sage tower,” he says. “One for each Helkyrisian city. Center of local politics and social news. Fills the same sort of role a New God’s temple does for Cavanos villages.”

  I stare at him. “Did you get smart while I was knocked out?”

  “No.” He laughs. “Lucien. His whole prince-encyclopedia-brain thing.”

  “Ah.” I open the heavy wooden door for him, and he ducks inside. This tower is cavernous, open, lined with benches and tables and the staircase tucked neatly in a corner, spiraling up into an endless column of misty, incense-choked air. The tower’s so high, you can barely see the roof, the top of it, darkness all the way up until a pinprick of glass lets light in. The walls are lined with doors, with alcoves of packed bookshelves built into the stone. I’m used to oil lamps, expecting them, but instead there are white mercury lamps.

  Or what I think are mercury lamps. These are burning far too brightly and too purely to be the ones I’ve seen in Cavanos. Just one or two are needed to light an entire area. It’s possible the polymaths here perfected them—possible and absolutely jaw-dropping. If Cavanos had this sort of technology, it wouldn’t need all the white mercury it ships in from Avel and goes through like water.

  “This way.” Malachite points at a far room. Our footsteps echo on the cold stone floor until we reach the door, and he knocks in that pattern he always does for Lucien. Three raps, then two.

  “Come in.”

  At the sound of Lucien’s voice, all the little hairs on my arms stand up and start to burn. My witch. My prince. Mine? No. My witch, but not my prince. The people’s prince. He’s only ever belonged to his people.

  My unheart spasms with the realization he’s lost his sister. Again. This time to power, not faked death. This time she chose to leave instead of being driven out. He must be devastated.

  Malachite pushes the door open, and the smell of cinnamon and clove bulls us down. Rich tapestries frame a round meeting table at which stands a half-bent elderly walnut of a man dressed head to toe in emerald green and gold, and Lucien, dressed in light blue and the softest smile when he sees me.

  “Zera.”

  He makes a polite half bow, excusing himself to the old sage man, and walks over.

  It’s just one word. It shouldn’t make me so happy. It should take more than just one. It should take books, endless epic poems, a bard’s monologue to make me feel this hot, this strong, this quickly. It’s not fair. It’s not fair he can do this to me.

  it’s not fair we’re still the monster.

  The room is dim, but my eyes catch every fold of cloth on him, every freckle, every inch he crosses in his boots to reach me. My witch. Their prince. His eyes—I’m so used to seeing his eyes as hard onyx shards. Betrayed onyx shards. Bitter onyx shards. But now, right now, they’re spills of ink. Liquid, gentle, reflecting the scarce light of the room and my own nerves back at me.

  He stops right before the danger. Right at the border of my space and his. He knows. He can sense it, just like I can—the two white-hot rings that radiate out from us, pressing, waiting, watching each other’s every move.

  “Are you feeling all right?” he asks. “You were out for so long—”

  “Fine.” I smile, tense. “Perfectly fine, Your Highness.”

  “You—” Lucien’s eyes flicker. “That’s—you don’t have to call me that anymore.”

  “You insisted.”

  “And now I insist on taking it back.”

  There’s a buzz that starts in my veins, and I can’t tell if it’s the smell of his skin I know so well by now or his magic that keeps me alive.

  the only thing that keeps us alive. he’s our one tether to life; he holds our life in the palm of his—

  A bag. It’s shoved at me so quickly, I don’t understand what it is until I see the stitching. Haphazard, po
or needlework in fine gold thread that reads: Heart.

  It’s so close and tantalizing, it almost distracts me from my first thought: a bit unoriginal, isn’t he? Varia, at least, wrote Traitor on mine. But his is just a label for what’s inside. Plain. Simple. Maybe that suits him. Maybe he’s the sort of witch who values simplicity.

  “Here.” Lucien holds my heart out to me, the bag faintly beating, faintly lumpy.

  My brain throbs. Echoes no one else can hear emanate from the heart bag—echoes of memory, like imprints of a body in the snow I can’t remember the face of. Who was here? Someone. My parents, maybe. My past, certainly. I can almost hear words, laughter, the smell of cinnamon.

  I don’t dare to dream. To believe. I want to—I want more than anything to believe he’s the sort of person, the sort of witch, to give me my heart back instantly. But I’ve met too many witches to fall for it again.

  “You’re letting me hold it?” I tease. “Awfully nice of you.”

  “It’s yours,” the prince insists. Iron shavings eke their way into his ink eyes, hard and sleek. “If you want it.”

  It’s too good to be true. He’s too good to be true. Nobody moves in the room—not the old sage man, not Malachite, not Lucien, not the thousand-year-old stones of the walls. So I decide to, walking a slow perimeter of the round table and running my fingers along its surface.

  “Hmm.” I hum idly. “Are you sure? I’m very useful, you know. Immortal at all times, unaging at all times. I can’t promise I’ll be quiet or polite at all times, but I can give it a good try.”

  I near the old sage man, all his creases and crinkles watching me.

  “Heartless?” he asks, his voice low and croaky with pipe smoke.

  “Just one of many.” I smile at him and curtsy. “Pleasure.”

  “You’ve been through enough—” Lucien doesn’t let me get away. He strides after me, rounding the table and cutting off my circuit. “For this damnable thing. I’ll put it back right now.”

  I see his fingertips blacken, golden twilight turning to deep night.

  It’s here. Finally, after so long. He’s going to—

  if you lose us, how will you protect him?

  My eager thoughts snap-freeze.

  without us, you have only your sword. we keep you from true death. If you lose us, you are weaker. weak enough someone may kill him before your very eyes.

  Weakness. I’ve felt weak for so long, for three years, but feelings are rarely reality. The witchfire in Vetris where he almost died, the night of the Hunt where he was very nearly murdered by Archduke Gavik. If I wasn’t immortal—I couldn’t have helped him. He would have died. And now, with Varia on the loose, leading a thousand-thousand valkerax into battle against the world—death is never far off. For anyone. Him most of all.

  if you lose us, you might lose him.

  I know he’ll try to stop her; I can see it in his eyes. I saw it the moment I walked in—sadness, yes, but tempered by a horrifically strong will. He has a plan.

  If I’m human, I can’t protect him.

  you could run. take it and run.

  I could.

  you won’t.

  I won’t. Not anymore.

  Not when I’ve found him again.

  He holds out the bag so innocently, so convinced of his own conviction. Of course I want it. I betrayed him for it. I lied for it. I sided with Varia for it. His fingers deepen with night, determined to give me what he thinks is what I want.

  What I thought I wanted.

  I know better now. Varia taught me better. Wherever she is, I’m faintly thankful to her for the trials, the errors, the pain. The realization.

  “It’s never been my heart,” I say.

  The darkness on his fingers stops growing, his face going still, and his black eyes confused. “What do you mean?”

  I laugh and round the table past him, coming back to where I started next to Malachite. “It was never my heart I wanted. What I wanted, always, was to feel human again.”

  “Then…” He starts forward. “Here.”

  “It took me a while to learn. It’s a hard thing to learn.”

  “Zera, please, just—”

  “That little beating thing in your hand, Your Highness,” I interrupt him, “doesn’t make someone human. It makes their chest a little heavier, their body a little louder. It gives them a drumbeat to march to, a compass to navigate by when the sun goes down. But it’s not the thing that makes one human.”

  His fist holding my heart wilts, his brows knitting. “Then…what does?”

  My smile breaks in two. I know what I have to do now. No—I’ve always known, since that night at the Hunt, when my body reacted before I did. Something in me has always known.

  “What makes us human is a feeling,” I start. “A feeling I get when I’m with you.”

  Lucien’s eyes widen and then catch fire.

  “If,” the old sage man croaks, “I may interject.”

  Grateful for the spotlight off me, wanting Lucien’s burning eyes off me, I wave my hand at him. “Please.”

  “There are a great many polymaths here in Breych. They study night and day the secrets of life, of nature, of the sky and the void beyond it.”

  “And?” Lucien impatiently leads. Our proper prince, interrupting his elders? Since when?

  “Recently, a very interesting theory has been put forth by Miralin’s sect, hypothesizing that some kind of energy is given off upon death. Mercurial energy, kinetic energy, heat energy—they aren’t quite sure what it is. But it seems to be there, for all species, across all ages. Perhaps—” He pauses, looking up at me. “Perhaps this is what you would call the ‘soul.’ Perhaps that is what makes us human. No…” He glances at Malachite thoughtfully and corrects himself. “Perhaps this is what makes us exist, here, in this moment on Arathess, feeling and thinking both sweet and terrible things.”

  For a moment, nobody speaks. It’s a big thing, too big to shoulder. We share it all, in this room, the weight of it near-crushing on its own and only manageable together in silence. Until Malachite gives off a snort—the pleased kind. Lucien won’t stop staring at me. And I at him.

  “Forgive me.” The sage taps his cane on the ground. “In my old age, I’ve become the rambling sort. Let us adjourn the meeting for now, Your Highness. We can resume in the morning when you’ve had rest.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Lucien says, never once looking away from my face. “Until then, the way guide you.”

  “And you as well.” The old sage nods with a wry grin.

  Time behaves badly, again and again. Lucien’s steps over to me are so slow, so stretched out, and then the heat of his hand on mine is fast and all at once, and I’m walking, no—running, both of us running out the door and the tower’s main room and past the snow and ice and onto an empty bridge where no one walks, no one looks, and then warmth, all of it. Warmth blazing against the freezing cold, on one side of my face, around my waist, against my chest and lips.

  Him. A kiss, a clasp, fire burning in my mouth and in my stomach and in my face and he’s everywhere and I want him to be everywhere. The hunger evaporates in the heat, there one moment and gone the next, not even ash left.

  Ah, some faint part of my disconnected brain thinks, so a kiss can be like this. Not like the world ending. But like the world beginning, too.

  It has to end. Everything has to end sometime, and time stops behaving badly when I least want it to—cold air lashing my skin as we pull apart.

  “Every day.” He cups my face in his hands, his gloves doing nothing to stop the warmth radiating from his palms. “Every day you weren’t at my side dragged on like slow torture.”

  “I’m sorry.” I laugh. “It was my duty, wasn’t it? To keep you entertained. And I vanished on you.”

  “This is not entertainment—”
His lips meet mine, mumble half buried in my skin. “This is a promise. You and I, for as long as Arathess exists with us on it. And after that. And after that.”

  It’s silly. It’s sweet. Can I have this? Do I deserve this? Maybe. Maybe not.

  Maybe what I deserve is not for me to decide.

  I can’t even think about the past. It’s blown away, like strong wind over dandelions. Every mistake, every hurt, every betrayal, everything we did to each other in Vetris, said to each other—these kisses heal it all shut. Heal it all closed. They will scar—of course they will. But they’ve stopped bleeding.

  And I’m so deliriously glad to stop bleeding.

  My laugh this time is water, running unsteadily and recklessly. “I’ll have you know, eternity is unbearable.”

  He leans his forehead on mine, our breath mixing white in the freezing air and his dark eyes gleaming with sun. “But with me?”

  “But with you, Lucien d’Malvane.” I kiss his proud nose, making a pressed line down to his lips. “Far less so.”

  3

  THE HARDEST

  PROMISE

  Love is, of course, a tad bit different for me than it is for everyone else.

  Lucien is still very much my witch. But it’s hard to remember that when we spend the rest of the afternoon wandering Breych’s hundred bridges, taking in every angle of the view, and talking about nothing at all—jokes about the nobles back home, about my time in the woods, his childhood memories. He says Fione’s all right, as all right as anyone can be after losing their loved one. Varia threatens at the surface of it all, his parents and his people, too. But he pulls it back—for me or for himself, I can’t tell.

  The hours soar by on easy wings made of his smile and his laugh. We make it easy on each other, because we both know: after this walk, after this time together, the real battle begins.

  The one to stop his sister.

  The one to, maybe, save the world from her. And her from herself.

  But where do we even begin? Who even has the answers for us?

  Sunset marks the end. Malachite finally comes to fetch us, but knowing him, he was watching all along. Politely, of course, he insists. With his back turned every time we decided to touch mouths. Lucien is fifteen different shades of red, helpless against the onslaught of Malachite and me teasing him together.